Posts Tagged ‘Terrorism’

President Obama gave an address from the Oval Office on Sunday night in the wake of the San Bernardino terror attack. In the course of his speech, an address riddled with a wholly self-serving defense of his abysmal record on national security, and also during the media coverage thereafter, it became plain that neither the President nor the Washington beltway media “get it.” The American people aren’t cowering in fear of ISIS. They’re not lashing out in hatred of American Muslims. They’re not afraid of al-Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, or any other terror group or “radicalized” elements living and operating in the United States. Instead, what the American people are is angry. The American people are enraged. They’re good and damned well pissed-off, and not just with the terrorists, but particularly with our political leadership and the DC beltway media. President Obama didn’t improve things for himself on Sunday evening, indeed one could argue he worsened things. The American people don’t trust the DC cartel to defend our nation, and it’s downright galling to average Americans.

Obama didn’t waste any time in listing a litany of actions he’s taken to fight terrorism. What he did not do was to acknowledge the failures of his administration. Instead, he started talking about new restrictions on gun ownership. A ban on purchasing firearms among those who are on the terror watch-list or no-fly list will not stop such things. The people who carried out the San Bernardino attack were not on the no-fly list. He went on to say we need to limit the sales of so-called “assault weapons.” The fact is that no ban on such weapons would be of any value. In France, such weapons are illegal. In California, the laws are more restrictive than anywhere in the US. Bans don’t stop criminal from getting guns. They merely stop innocents from self-defense.

In talking about the threat we’re facing, the President couldn’t manage to link clearly, and in the same sentence, the notion of radical, militant Islamic terrorism. He threw “radicalization” into one sentence, and “Islam” into another. Nobody takes this seriously. When the President can’t square-up to an enemy and name him without equivocation, there’s no way the American people will respect the President. His tiresome, tortured excuse-making for Islamists and apologetics for Islam are no longer tolerated by the American people.

In the coverage after the speech, Senator Rubio, a lagging candidate for the GOP nomination, talked about how Americans are afraid to travel, and afraid to fly. I’m sure there are a few hands-full of such people, but everybody I know is simply infuriated. They don’t believe the government, either party, or the media generally. Why should they? More, Rubio went on to insist that we needed to collect more data, but as Rand Paul pointed out, the French gather more information than the US ever has, but it did not stop the attacks in Paris.

The simple fact is that as I’ve recounted to you before, President Obama Is NOT incompetent. He’s malevolent. He isn’t interested in what’s good for the country or its people. In point of fact, he’s remained steadfastly committed to punishing the American people since his first inaugural. Obama can’t wait to tell us about how we should not push Muslims away with distrust and suspicion, but this is the same President who did everything in his power to alienate people who attended Tea Party rallies. In the instance of Tea Party folks, or conservatives generally, he couldn’t wait to alienate, and his friends in the media couldn’t wait to paint the the Colorado theater shooter as a Tea Party guy, which of course was debunked within an hour or so of the claim first being made in the media. No, this President has too many sympathies with the Jihadis, and more in common with them than with the bulk of his countrymen. Barack Obama is despicable, and this address simply confirms that view of him. Rather than supporting and defending the citizens of the United States, defending their liberties while simultaneously defending the country, Obama is more interested in protecting the feelings of Muslims while simultaneously preying upon the First and Second amendment liberties of citizens. He’s not interested in defeating ISIS or al-Qaeda, but in defeating conservatives by any means necessary.

This morning, in promoting the day’s broadcasting schedule, CBS News tweeted out the following:

If you had any doubts about the diabolical nature of Barack Obama’s ideology, it should now be clear. Here we have the man entrusted with safeguarding the nation, and upon the circumstance of a terrorist attack within our own borders, an attack possible only due to the faulty vetting of his immigration enforcement policies that have created a virtual open border, Obama does not seek to close the door, or go after the terrorists, those who inspired, funded, and/or trained them, or any logical course of action at all. Instead, Barack Obama seems poised to turn the entire country into a “Gun Free Zone” wherein only the bad guys have guns.

We know conclusively that gun violence is down almost everywhere in America, except for one class of location: Gun Free Zones. Therefore, President Obama is going to do the most destructive thing possible in response: He’s going to broaden Gun Free Zones to encompass the entire nation. That way, we’re ALL TARGETS, EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME. (Unless we’re surrounded by men and women with guns because we’re under Secret Service protection.)

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the White House is not a “Gun Free Zone.” President Obama doesn’t live in a “Gun Free Zone.” In fact, wherever he goes, he’s in a bubble of protection that is filled with guns aimed at protecting him. Oh, sure, he’s not wielding any himself, but the men and women of the Secret Service who surround him are armed to the teeth. Yes, the President exists in a “Gun-Enhanced Zone.”

Once again, what’s good for Emperor Obama is not good enough for Americans. It’s good to be king.

I suspect that before this evening’s address is over, as he goes on to announce new Executive Orders clamping down on your right to protect yourself, your family, and your home and property, from the length and breadth of America, minus the statist havens on both shores, we will hear a loud refrain of these most famous words:

*** Caution: Strong Language ***

It’s time to say what needs to be said: Barack Obama, stop blaming and punishing the victims of your intransigent maladministration of our immigration laws, and your senseless policies on defense of the nation. It’s time for you to understand that you don’t run anything that the American people don’t want you to run.

Over the last two days, I’ve watched in utter amazement as our media and government go out of their collective way to avoid talking about the nature of the incident in San Bernadino, CA, on Wednesday. To listen to most public officials in the Obama administration, including the Jihadi-in-Chief himself, one might draw the conclusion that there is something wrong with mentioning Islam and Terrorism in the same sentence. In fact, one might just as well never use the word “Terrorism” ever again. We’ll call it “work-place violence,” or we’ll call it “street violence,” and we’ll pretend it had all been just a random occurrence with no ideological or religious linkage of any kind. Our culture is breaking down, in part because so few seem interested in identifying plainly, and without apology, the nature(s) of our affliction(s.) You cannot beat an enemy you will not name. You cannot vanquish and evil you refuse to admit exists. One cannot overcome a social ill when one will not name it, never mind naming its cause. We rational folk must lead the way. We mustn’t let some contrivance of political correctness impede our statement of the absolute, unvarnished truth. Our President, most of our political leaders (appointed and elected,) and average citizens refuse to state the plainly obvious, but I will not: The shooting in San Bernadino was an act of terrorism motivated in part or in whole by adherence to political Islam.

I have heard it at least ten-thousand times: “Islam is a religion of peace.” If that’s all Islam is, we’d have no problem with Islam, but Islam is much, much more. Islam is also a cultural and political doctrine. It is a legal doctrine. It is a system of beliefs that countenances no breach among the facets of adherents’ lives. Even non-adherents are liable for their conduct according to Islam. Even those who are ignorant of Islam’s existence are required to give their fealty to it. Practiced consistently, every Muslim would a Jihadi become. Islam does not accept or tolerate substitution. It does not permit free will. Like pro-abortionists in our political sphere, it loves choice, so long as the choice made is in concert with their beliefs. In other words, no actual choice is to be permitted. In fact, this is why I argue that the rabid left in our own political sphere are the “Jihadis” in our midst. Political Islam is statism, as thoroughly and as fundamentally as any other flavor. It favors the interests of the state over the rights of the individual, and it relies upon anointed guardians to determine what are those interests. If you wonder how it could be that the left is as fundamentally fanatical as militant political Islam, this is the answer.

In San Bernadino, what we have seen is another expression of the extension of political Islam into American culture. Just as American culture is fundamentally at odds with secular flavors of statism, so also is it incompatible with religious flavors. Rand liked to describe these two seemingly opposing brands of statism as the mystics of muscle and spirit. The left’s dogmatic mysticism is based entirely on the secular humanistic concerns of the body. The religiously motivated mysticism of militant Islam is concerned only with one’s spirit in the great beyond. The first seeks to own and dominate all on Earth, while the latter seeks to dominate on Earth for the alleged sake of the hereafter. Both are frauds, and both are intrinsically evil. Our American system had been founded to be effectively Laissez Faire both in terms of the body (economics and ethics) and the spirit (religion and ethics) since it was understood by our founders and the framers of our constitution that no collectivized version of either could be countenanced in freedom.

The terrorist attack in San Bernadino was the act of a conspiracy by radicalized adherents of political Islam. Any other notion is mere foolishness propagated by those who would just as soon see you unarmed in a battle they will deny exists. The French poet Charles Baudelaire observed that “the finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.” Whether this is so, it is certainly true that the radical militants of political Islam would just as soon have you doubt their existence, and the full evil of their intentions. The same can be said of the rabid-dog left, and it is this that should clue us in to their fundamental similarity. As the terrorist act in San Bernadino was underway, female shooter Tashfeen Malik posted a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook. (CNN) CNN’s site goes on to say that it seems the shooting may have been inspired by ISIS. This weak wording is exemplary of our cultural collapse. “Seems?” “Inspired by?” This rhetorical disarming merely accentuates the actual disarming, when one discovers thatdeaths by guns is on the decrease all over the country except in one narrow class of locations: Gun free zones.

If that’s not bad enough, we have a US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, vowing to prosecute those who use “anti-Muslim” speech that “edges toward violence.”(DailyWire) This sort of absurdity is precisely what’s destroying our nation, and it’s an excellent parallel to so-called “moderate Republicans” (a.k.a. “liberal Republicans”) who will not fight the left. Do you know why Donald Trump is leading? It’s because he’ll say what many are thinking but are too damned frightened to say. Of course, Trump is a stalking-horse who will eventually self-destruct conveniently ceding the lead at some future date, or perhaps even after the nomination is his, but either way, his current popularity signifies something important: America is crowded with the cowed, silent majority who have been collectively beaten into submissive silence by the popular media culture. None will speak it plainly until it’s staring them in the face, and lopping their head off for their trouble. It’s time to speak up, Loretta Lynch be damned, and we need to name this evil, denounce it, and commence the fight against it. Until then, you can expect the collapse to continue apace. Americans are dying because we will not name it, never mind fight it. Its name is political Islam, and while our leaders fiddle us into the ashes, it’s advancing, it’s gaining ground, and we don’t dare speak its name.

Now we know why Republicans are shaking in their shoes. It’s not the usual DC-Beltway cowardice, but an all-encompassing terror campaign against them(and us.) Barack Obama has pulled out the “Zombie Apocalypse” option from his playbook, and it makes this weekend’s malfunction of EBTs seem like a test, or a demonstration. This President talks about blackmail, but that’s all he does. Now, he’s threatening to stop EBT deposits for 1 November, 2013, in order to scare Republicans into a deal. He’s threatening riots. Now you know at least one more part of the hammer he’s using against Republicans.

In Boston, the bloody attack on the famous marathon has given residents a sample of what it must be to live in Israel on a daily basis. One dead, and one now in custody, what the two twisted, radicalized brothers Tsarnaev ought to have taught a nation is an abject lesson in the complete failure of our immigration policy. Details are still coming to light, but it is now apparent that the nineteen year-old, Dzhokhar, hospitalized in custody, is a perfect example why the entire idea of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” as currently being discussed in Washington is a complete and utter failure. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a citizen of the United States on September 11th, 2012. A mere seven months later, he conspired with his older brother Tamerlan to commit an act of terror against the nation that had adopted him with open arms. The elder bomber shouldn’t have been in this country, but thanks to an immigration system that does nothing to protect the American people from violent offenders, he remained in this country despite a conviction for domestic violence.

His mother spouted conspiracy theories, claiming her sons are innocent, but this comes from a woman who was herself convicted of stealing over $1600.00 worth of merchandise just last year. The two brothers and their sister along with their mother have been on public assistance for much of their time in the US, and this is the thanks the American people have been offered in exchange for a foolish generosity that exceeds all rational boundaries. The now-deceased elder brother, twenty-six year-old Tamerlan, was an engineering student, and with those skills, he apparently learned to build things like pressure-cooker bombs. There is no doubt that these two bear full responsibility for their crimes, but our government and its foolhardy policies are to blame for their entry and residence in the United States, using all they were given by a beneficent nation that too easily took them in.

What is wrong with a country that invites in people and permits them to re-establish their own sectarian cultures in our nation, cultures that are in direct ethical and religious conflict with our own? What is wrong with a nation that invites in people who will become killers, raised, fed, and housed by our welfare state that is so greedy to extend its reach that it will take all comers at the expense of taxpayers, and this time, at the expense of at least four lives of people who would otherwise be with us today had these two villains not been permitted the opportunity to act as predators on the streets of Boston? Schooled by you, fed by you, that vacation you couldn’t take as you were taxed to pay for their food or housing, or enjoying the fruits of scholarships and other financial aid, these two monsters were the product of an immigration system that is broken but will not be repaired by the fraud being discussed by the “gang of eight.” If there is any justice in the world, it will be that the moronic and morally bankrupt notions of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” now under discussion in our Capital will have exploded with those bombs on the street in Boston.

The members of the “Gang-of-Eight” promise there will be no welfare eligibility, but we now know that members of this family of terrorists-in-training subsisted for some time on public assistance, according to an on-air report on Foxnews. Why? The mother was convicted of $1600 theft, and she remains in the US? Why? She should have been deported immediately after conviction. ICE should have been waiting at the back of the courtroom to shove her onto a plane bound for her homeland, but that didn’t happen. Why? In 2009, Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have been deported after an arrest and conviction for domestic violence, but he was permitted to remain, according to JudicialWatch. Why? The immigration system didn’t fail them. It failed us. The welfare system didn’t fail them. It failed us. All of the stooges in Washington DC and around the country who will now assure us that immigration needs to be reformed are correct, but they are lying to the American people when they offer their prescriptions. We need to secure the border, we need to screen would-be immigrants more thoroughly, we need to monitor them at least until they become US citizens, and we must forbid them from subsisting on the benevolence of a willing welfare state for at least that long. Violations of our laws should result in immediate and irrevocable deportation, particularly crimes of violence, fraud and theft. This shouldn’t apply only to those coming from largely Muslim countries or regions, but to immigrants from every country.

We cannot afford moral agnosticism when it comes to the integration of immigrants into our society. The failure of such amoral policies are written forcefully on the pages of our newspapers and websites throughout the tragedies of the last dozen years. We mustn’t tell people that their belief in Islam disqualifies them from immigration, but we must inform them that in the United States, in our civil society, the civil law – not the religious – must dominate the interactions among all people. We have arrived at the sickening point at which we not only import terrorists, but also import people who establish their own enclaves and sub-cultures in which some will be subjected to those seeking to recruit terrorists or radicalize young people. We see this in the open, but we permit them to remain. Do we not have enough evil-doers of our own without inviting in more, funding their existences, and bearing the burdens of their crimes against us?

It is not only Islamists. From Mexico and points South, we import millions who subsist on our welfare, our health-care, and our generosity. Our courts here in Texas are filled with the cases of robbery, thuggery, mayhem, and murder committed by illegal immigrants as well as resident aliens who import with them some of the worst facets of their cultures. In some cases, illegals are turned loose for violations of law for which legal residents would be prosecuted, but that are much harder to contend with when you add in the bureaucracy of the Immigration service. Here in Texas, the number of people killed by drunk drivers who turn out to be in the country illegally is staggering, and all too often, they do not face deportation after their sentences, not because they “slip through the cracks,” but because our government refuses to do so. Let loose as a matter of policy after non-felony offenses, many escalate to more serious crimes.

Is it all Muslims? Not nearly. Is it all Mexicans? Hardly. Is it a troubling proportion? Yes. This is because under the leadership of four consecutive presidents, we have permitted the government to excise most notions of integration or assimilation from the process. Our welfare systems invites the poor but also the malevolent to arrive in huddled masses on our shores. I have listened to the purveyors of “comprehensive immigration reform” peddling their wares to the American people, but there can be no doubt that while behind their marble columns, and oaken desks, they are immune from most of the consequences, we who fund this country are the first victims of their big ideas. We mustn’t have a friendly and generous immigration system at the expense of the lives, liberties, and treasure of the American people.

As the President announced the capture of the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, touting the goodness and resolve of the American people, I couldn’t help but wonder if our policies correlate with the Presidents flowery words. It is this president, after all, who refuses to enforce our immigration laws. It is this president who issued executive orders that will be found to have made it easier for the elder Tsarnaev brother to remain in this country despite warnings from a foreign government and a domestic violence conviction in this country. It is this president whose administration now faces a lawsuit from ICE agents for being punished for doing their jobs by enforcing the immigration laws of this nation.

There was a time when the immigration policies of this country were aimed at making the country greater, but now our policy has become one that proclaims “come as you are and live like you wish, even at our expense.” There will be those who will accuse me of being anti-immigrant, but being the grandson of immigrants, and married to an immigrant myself, I dismiss such foolish claims. Instead, I assert that America must remain a nation to which immigrants may come, but we must return to a policy that is a good deal more discerning and demanding when we decide who may come and who may remain. The first evidence of one’s suitability to immigration must be a willingness to wait in line, abiding by the laws of our country, including particularly those regarding who may enter and under which conditions.

This sad incident had begun with the despicable act of terror by two young, radicalized men. These men had been here in the United States by virtue of our pity and our charity, and these among our virtues were turned against us. This is only possible because we have permitted politicians to imagine that their personal feelings of beneficence permit them the discretion to extend it endlessly at our expense, to all comers. It’s not only this incident, but all of the lesser incidents of torment and murder that are enacted by people residing illegally and legally in the United States who ought not be permitted to stay, and who should have been ejected at the first instance of entanglement with our criminal judicial systems. Hundreds of thousands of times each year, people permitted by the policies or intransigence of our government enact crimes at the expense of the American people, and the trail of dead and maimed is much longer than the media or politicians would have you know.

“Losers”

Perhaps we should adopt the standard laid forth by furious but ashamed Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the two men, interviewed in Maryland Friday, where he was asked by reporters what he thought brought about the behavior of his nephews:

“Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves — these are the only reasons I can imagine.”(emphasis added)

Tsarni, paternal uncle to the two bombers, seemed to be saying that these two were unable to settle themselves, a suggestion that they had not fully assimilated into the culture of America. Tsarni professed a love for his country, and explained that he teaches his own children to love the country, in effect, seeking to make of them Americans. He clearly regards those who won’t assimilate as “losers.”

This is ultimately the problem with our immigration system: It no longer screens out the losers, and worse, now promises them unearned rewards if they can get here somehow. More, agencies do nothing whatever to monitor immigrants to see how they are progressing toward assimilation. The “Gang of Eight” Senators is going to have a harder job selling their indecent proposal on immigration, if only because this entire event highlights just how poorly the liberal ideas on immigration policy have worked. It has created a wave of crime, a bloody trail of victims, and an absurd lack of judgment with respect to those who come to or seek to remain in our country. A loose policy is not what America needs, and this incident, combined with more than two decades of tragedies borne by an irresponsible sense of benevolence on the part of politicians has created an environment in which this sort of thing may become the new normal. These villains are responsible for their own acts, but our politicians are responsible for holding the door open to all the world without judgment. They’ve let in far too many “losers,” because just like the 9/11 hijackers, these bombers were here legally. As evidenced by the decline of our civilization, we have plenty enough “losers” of our own. Thanks to the diligence of our law enforcement personnel, these two are off the streets, but sadly, due to an unjustly forgiving immigration policy, there will be more who will likely follow in their footsteps.

On Tuesday evening, Greta Van Susteren reported the astonishing but predictable news: The Obama administration knew within hours or even minutes who had perpetrated the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, ultimately killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The cover story about an anti-Islamic video was merely a scapegoat of convenience that had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on our consulate, but the sickening fact is that President Obama’s administration, including the State Department, and high level national security officials were well aware of the truth even as they continued to try to sell its cover story to the American people. The reason is simple: The Benghazi attack was the first successful strike on American soil by organized radical Islamic supremacists since September 11th, 2001, on its 11th anniversary. Fourteen days after this attack, Barack Obama was still telling the American people it was about a video, desperately hoping to disconnect the events from the obvious failures in his leadership and foreign policy. Barack Obama has deceived the American people. For seven hours, in full possession of the facts, as the attack raged and Americans were slaughtered, this President and his administration did nothing except to concoct a cover story.

Perhaps the most galling meme put forward by the Obama administration in the wake of this dismal failure was the attempt to accuse Mitt Romney of politicizing the event. The facts speak for themselves: The Obama administration commenced the politicization of this attack by lying to the American people on the basis of politically motivated calculations about the impact the truth would have on the upcoming election. Barack Obama and his administration clearly have no shame, but while they have sought to hide the truth, on Tuesday evening, emails were disclosed that should put an end to the obfuscation. From FoxNews:

The emails obtained by Fox News were sent by the State Department to a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.

Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. People who received these emails work directly under the nation’s top national security, military and diplomatic officials, Fox News was told.

That Candy Crowley would give Obama cover on the cover-up during the second Presidential debate is bad enough, but to now discover that the whole administration was quite well aware of the source of the attack means that we not only have a President willing to lie to the American people, but that he has surrounded himself with a cadre of bureaucratic henchmen who share his contempt for Americans. The Obama administration may be amateurish with respect to its handling of foreign policy, but they are first-rate professionals when it comes to lying to the nation. The mainstream media continues to cover and hide the lengths to which this administration has gone in its disinformation campaign against the American people.

Joe Wilson was right when he yelled at Obama during a State of the Union address: “You lie!” Worse, however, President Obama isn’t a man who once told a lie and got away with it: He is a reprobate. He is a liar by trade, and nothing he says may be trusted. Cataloging the lies of his debate appearance on Monday night would take many pages, but suffice it to say that even some in the mainstream media are having a difficult time covering his tracks.

What readers need to know about Barack Obama is this: There is no lie he won’t tell, and no American whose life and memory he will not sacrifice to his political desires. This President yammers about the politicization of a tragedy as a pre-emptive strike against the shocking truth that political calculations were and remain the motive for the cover-up of the events in Libya. Obama hopes the American people will be fooled again, and that when he says he has “kept us safe,” they will forget the deadly attack on our consulate, and the Fort Hood shooting, among other acts of terrorism he refuses to acknowledge as such. That’s all this really is, and all it’s intended to do. His entire administration is convicted of a lie, and he’s betting the American people will be too.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a serious issue, and for all of those who say it’s wrong to condemn a whole religion for the actions of a few, I may hear that argument but its weight is diminishing as the entire globe lights with the fires of violent Jihadi protests. There’s no more disguising it: The radical global Jihadi front is on the march, and it includes elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, but it also includes elements of Hamas, al Qaeda, and various other groups around the globe. In London, our embassy is seeing increasingly violent protests. In Berlin, the same thing is true. Let me explain what is happening: They are using the fraudulent claim of a Youtube video as the grounds for what they’re doing, but that’s not what those driving this have in mind. They wish to drive the US out of the Middle East, and ultimately, out of Europe, and they’re gambling that weak-kneed Europeans will be glad to comply, since they have a long history of capitulating to the Islamists who have gained increasing influence in their countries due to liberal immigration policies and ridiculous welfare programs.

They have their toe-holds in Europe, and it is now their intention to begin to take it all over. They’re not quite strong enough to do so, but what they have in mind is to create enough chaos in Europe and the US that we will withdraw entirely from the Middle East. It’s an attempt to isolate Israel, but also the United States.

This is a day of rampage for the “Religion of Peace.” This is at least partly the result of a foreign policy directed by an affirmative action Nobel Prize recipient. America is under attack. The West is under attack. It is only a matter of time until Israel comes under ferocious attack. What is President Obama doing about it?

When you see that even scientists have become so irrational, you know you’re not dealing with an ordinary regime, or rational actors who can be counted upon to follow norms of behavior as we perceive them to be in the West. The Israeli National News is reporting that the Iranian nuclear scientist who was assassinated in Tehran in January was very much concerned with and focused on the annihilation of Israel, according to his widow. Whether she was prompted into this statement by the Ahmedinejad government, or whether she volunteered the information on her own, this speaks to the plainly irrational desires of that regime. There are those who suggest that there’s no proof Iran is an irrational actor, but I think that flies in the face of more than thirty years of evidence to the contrary.

Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism, and they continue to back operations by Hezbollah along with others throughout the Middle East. More, their current dictator and his theocratic overseers are so-called “Twelvers” who believe in the 12th Imam and a theology that specifies the end of their “oppression.” These are people who have beliefs more irrational than the worst cultists you’ve ever known in the West, and yet there are those who think we can somehow negotiate in good faith with them. Worst of all, their leader, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, professes a devout belief in this theology, and says that the oppressors are the “Great Satan” (the US) and the “Lesser Satan” (Israel.)

For those who suggest we can deal with such thinking, I’d remind them that nobody took Hitler and his occult beliefs and practices seriously outside of Germany until it was much too late. I wonder if these same critics would contend that Hitler had been a “rational actor.” The Iranian dictator is a maniac, and to pretend he’s less dangerous than he is would be to subject this country to unnecessary risks and a threat of serious harm. This guy is no more rational than David Koresh, but Koresh had a few rifles, and for that Janet Reno laid siege to his Mt. Carmel compound. This mad-man is seeking nuclear weapons, and has already tried to carry out political assassinations in the US. By what standard can anybody conclude he is rational?

There’s a story circulating on the Internet that was posted last Wednesday at ACLU.org by Chris Anders, in which it was put forth that the latest NDAA includes provisions that would allegedly make “the battlefield” your back yard, and make American Citizens subject to indefinite imprisonment and subject to military authorities. Of course, with the state of things in this country, it’s not entirely out of character for the folks in Washington DC to view Americans as an enemy, but I also know that the ACLU has its own axes to grind, and part of the trouble with Mr. Anders’ article is that it contains references but no links to the specific provisions of law he says are problematic. Worse, in publishing the article, rather than provide links to the actual legislative language, or links to the proposed [Udall]amendment Mr. Anders seems to be advocating, the links for the Amendment take readers to an activism page aiming to lobby Congress.

This is by itself a dishonest tactic, and I have some serious concerns with somebody at the ACLU using the occasion of this bill to promote fear-mongering notions about what this bill actually provides. Apparently, I’m not the only one who has noticed that the ACLU’s Chris Anders seems to be jumping the shark with his claims. The first thing that made me suspicious about the article is that Anders never quotes the actual legislative language in question. Why not let readers see the text and decide for themselves? Instead, what you get from Mr. Anders is a string of claims about the effects of the law, rather than any specific legal language to support his assertions. For instance, Anders writes:

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world.”

Notice that Anders includes a link on the words “the power” but rather than taking you to the text of the bill, or some description of “the power,” instead, the link directs you to an advocacy page where you can fill out a form and petition on behalf of the Udall Amendment. There are eleven hyperlinks in the body of the article, and of these eleven, nine take you to this same destination. In fact, rather than pointing you to the specific language of the Udall Amendment, the words “Udall Amendment” are linked three times to the ACLU petition page. That’s simply dishonest. Readers have an expectation that when they see a word or name that includes a hyperlink, it will take them to some source or related information relevant to the linked text. Anders certainly didn’t seem to want you to see the actual Udall Amendment, which now leads me to wonder why. Naturally, I went out and found the Udall Amendment, and have linked it as Anders should have done.

The real problem with Anders’ article is that it does a lot of huffing and puffing, and in breathless terms describes provisions in a bill that by his characterization will lead to American citizens being arrested by US military forces in the back yards and leading to indefinite incarceration without charges, bail, or due process of law. That would be a terrible and astonishing thing for the Congress to do under any circumstance, and I would loudly oppose it if that were the case here. In point of fact, I’d be calling for Americans to join me in opposition, but that’s not what I’m finding. Instead, what I’m finding actually conflicts with Anders’ characterization, and suggest dishonesty on his part. Again, rather than try to characterize the provisions of Senate Bill 1867, I went out and found it for you so that you can make your own decisions based on its actual text. The allegedly tyrannical provisions are sections 1031 and 1032.

The text of these provisions is as follows:

SEC. 1031. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

(a) In General- Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.

(b) Covered Persons- A covered person under this section is any person as follows:

(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.

(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.

(c) Disposition Under Law of War- The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following:

(1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

(2) Trial under chapter 47A of title 10, United States Code (as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 (title XVIII of Public Law 111-84)).

(3) Transfer for trial by an alternative court or competent tribunal having lawful jurisdiction.

(4) Transfer to the custody or control of the person’s country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.

(d) Construction- Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

(e) Requirement for Briefings of Congress- The Secretary of Defense shall regularly brief Congress regarding the application of the authority described in this section, including the organizations, entities, and individuals considered to be `covered persons’ for purposes of subsection (b)(2).

SEC. 1032. REQUIREMENT FOR MILITARY CUSTODY.

(a) Custody Pending Disposition Under Law of War-

(1) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in paragraph (4), the Armed Forces of the United States shall hold a person described in paragraph (2) who is captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) in military custody pending disposition under the law of war.

(2) COVERED PERSONS- The requirement in paragraph (1) shall apply to any person whose detention is authorized under section 1031 who is determined–

(A) to be a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force that acts in coordination with or pursuant to the direction of al-Qaeda; and

(B) to have participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners.

(3) DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR- For purposes of this subsection, the disposition of a person under the law of war has the meaning given in section 1031(c), except that no transfer otherwise described in paragraph (4) of that section shall be made unless consistent with the requirements of section 1033.

(4) WAIVER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY- The Secretary of Defense may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if the Secretary submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States.

(b) Applicability to United States Citizens and Lawful Resident Aliens-

(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.

(2) LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to a lawful resident alien of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.

(c) Implementation Procedures-

(1) IN GENERAL- Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall issue, and submit to Congress, procedures for implementing this section.

(2) ELEMENTS- The procedures for implementing this section shall include, but not be limited to, procedures as follows:

(A) Procedures designating the persons authorized to make determinations under subsection (a)(2) and the process by which such determinations are to be made.

(B) Procedures providing that the requirement for military custody under subsection (a)(1) does not require the interruption of ongoing surveillance or intelligence gathering with regard to persons not already in the custody or control of the United States.

(C) Procedures providing that a determination under subsection (a)(2) is not required to be implemented until after the conclusion of an interrogation session which is ongoing at the time the determination is made and does not require the interruption of any such ongoing session.

(D) Procedures providing that the requirement for military custody under subsection (a)(1) does not apply when intelligence, law enforcement, or other government officials of the United States are granted access to an individual who remains in the custody of a third country.

(E) Procedures providing that a certification of national security interests under subsection (a)(4) may be granted for the purpose of transferring a covered person from a third country if such a transfer is in the interest of the United States and could not otherwise be accomplished.

(d) Effective Date- This section shall take effect on the date that is 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply with respect to persons described in subsection (a)(2) who are taken into the custody or brought under the control of the United States on or after that effective date.

A fair reading of these sections highlights a couple of things to which we should pay close attention in examination of Mr. Anders’ claims about the bill. First, the language included seems to specifically exempt US Citizens and lawful Resident Aliens from application of this provision. Second, contrary to his claims in his introductory paragraph, it is hard to see how this bill would directly or even indirectly violate the constitutional civil liberties of American citizens and resident aliens here in the United States. Mr. Anders claimed:

“The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.”

I think this is disingenuous at best, and outright dishonest and inflammatory at worst. He’s clearly trying to incite a fearful response based on suppositions I don’t think a fair reading of these provisions explicitly or implicitly would enact. Of course, I knew that this might well be the case when I saw that PrisonPlanet.com was covering this story, because that site is largely authored by real conspiracy kooks. Sure, they find some interesting material, but as in this case, I think their willingness to stretch the meaning and clear intent of things leads to a sort of self-destructive, self-defeating exaggeration and an atmosphere of bombastic claims most of which turn out to be overblown or entirely bogus. Frankly, once Alex Jones is involved, a story loses much of the credibility to which we might otherwise attach, because Jones has a long history of turning loosely connected events and circumstances together in some of the most convoluted conspiratorial garbage on the Internet. To each his own, but really, once this loon went down the whole “controlled demolition” rabbit-hole with the so-called “9/11 Truthers,” that was the end of his credibility, and with him, the credibility of anything posted on his sites.

The Senate’s bill may have some problems, but Anders’ characterization is dubious at best. I think it’s clear that he and the ACLU are trying to create a lot of smoke where there is no fire, and I think the Udall Amendment is intended to place mandates on executive branch actions that may or may not be in the best interests of the United States, but could be understood to hamper this or any future President in acting as the Commander in Chief. Whether the Udall Amendment is worthwhile is itself a matter of some controversy, but what is clear to me is that the ACLU is misusing this article to drum up a political issue without providing any substantive arguments. I’ve yet to see how any of Anders’ claims are substantiated in the text of sections 1031 or 1032, as posted above, and these provisions certainly don’t match the claims. If this is the best case the ACLU can make against these provisions, it’s time to admit that the ACLU has other motives with Anders’ article. The method of presentation, the lack of citations, and the disingenuous appraisal suggests strongly that the ACLU is grasping at straws.

As much as anybody, I don’t trust our government, particularly where the liberties of the American people are concerned, but this story seems designed to mislead the American people, or to incite fear among them. This could be a serious issue, but the version of the bill now posted indicates none of the dangers that Anders implies. It’s dangerous to lead the American people astray, and in this case, I think it’s clear that Anders is doing just that.

It seems that at least some of those who are Squatters Occupying Wall Street(That’s SOWS) are intent upon provoking fights, and utilizing violence. As USAToday is now reporting, there are elements within the greater body of protesters in Zuccotti Park who have made some parts of the park so dangerous that some among their own number won’t venture there. That’s a stunning development, and it may indicate that either the protest is breaking down and losing momentum, or that there are now more dangerous elements operating with the specific intention of causing violence, or exploiting the environment for criminal activities. Earlier today, FDNY removed generators and lantern fuel, along with other items that might pose a public hazard. It may be that the cold air is magnifying the poor conditions, and contributing to the divisions among the sub-groups. There are certainly those with a vested interest in creating the outbreak of violence, and they have every intention of provoking it.

In related news, Glenn Beck has made an episode of his GBTV available for free on his website, exposing the truth about the squatters On Wall Street. You might want to check it out, as it runs two hours in its full length. The Arizone Counter-Terrorism Information Center has posted a bulletin because they discovered posters at Occupy Phoenix telling protesters to kill anybody who violates their rights, and it’s titled: “When should you shoot a cop?” This makes it clear that these people are not all peace-loving protesters as they have claimed and advertised. Instead, as I suggested earlier, there is an element trying to agitate and provoke violent confrontations between protesters and police. As The Blaze has discovered, the author seems to be a leftist named Larken Rose. He’s another agitator intent on creating violence as the pretense for greater mob actions.

This is turning into a three-ring circus, with clearly divided segments of the Occupy crowd seeking distinct ends. There are the hard-core leftists who are organizing the movement, funded by Soros and his various henchmen and sub-groups; there are the mass of useful idiot leftists who are the borderline anarchists spoiling for a fight; there are the other Americans of a more libertarian sort who have permitted themselves to be pulled in on the side of the worst elements. One might feel some sympathy for the last group, but the truth is that we must realize that this is the goal of the organizers, and it is this group who will bear the brunt of the worst violence that will erupt. The military is being actively infiltrated by gang elements, but now also by leftists. The idea is simple: If they can capture control of the military, they have their army for violence against the civilian population, including civil authorities like the police.

Lastly, it’s fitting that I’ve decided to label these protesters as SOWS, because the behavior they’ve been engaging in at Occupy Madison certainly is that of pigs. Apparently, they’ve at least temporarily been denied an extension due to public masturbation. Yes, that’s right: Public masturbation. Hotel guests from across the street complained of this behavior in full view of the public. We knew these people were uncivilized, but this is pathetic. Nobody will be permitted to complain if the SOWS are hereafter called “jag-offs.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we should acknowledge that these people are doing things the Tea Party never did, and that they have seditious goals and objectives that most Americans cannot and should not endorse. In short, they represent a fringe element intent on overthrowing our Constitution. These SOWS must be opposed, and their benefactors and leaders must be exposed.

I was stationed in Germany at the time of the Pan Am 103 downing over Lockerbie, Scotland. When my own family flew back to the US a couple weeks ahead of me just a year later, it was on the flight that had replaced it. It could just as well have been my family on that plane. I am satisfied that the thug is gone, and my only sorrow in the matter is that it has taken so long to rid the world of him, but with the Obama having made a mess of Libya, what will we say when the blow-back arrives? For those of you who haven’t noticed, there’s something seriously wrong with a foreign policy that precipitates a coup d’etats in another country without considering first what would happen to weapons of value to terrorists when a number of the ostensible rebels have been linked to al-Qaeda.

I want you to consider with our porous southern border what would happen if these terrorists were able to smuggle a dozen of these missiles into the US. Imagine them smuggling them into position around our airports and knocking down airliners for sport and terror. Imagine them taking up position in Israel to attack their airliners. Imagine any of these scenarios, and realize that this one failure on the part of the Obama administration could lead to the premature deaths of thousands of Americans, or Israelis, or frankly anybody else, and you begin to understand that while it may be good for the world that Gaddafi is gone, and none of us will shed a tear over his final exit, the absurdity and irresponsibility of this operation cannot be over-estimated in its potential costs in lives and the security of the American people, and indeed, peace-loving people everywhere.

While we can all be thankful that this thug has been eliminated from the face of the Earth, we should nevertheless worry what will now happen as a result of the Obama administration’s bungling. Remember, the Obama crowd helped facilitate this entire coup d’etats on the basis of Samantha Power’s theory of Right To Protect(R2P.) More, Obama is carrying out something much more important on behalf of the Muslim brotherhood, and indeed all the most militant Islamists in the region: He is getting rid of the “un-pure” thugs like Gaddafi and Mubarak, and even bin Laden. The most radical Islamists never liked any of these militaristic dictators either, as they view them as oppressors of Muslims who are operating from a secular basis. They were all happy to see Saddam go, for instance, and they’ll be happy to get rid of the House of Saud in the Kingdom of Arabia, just as they will ultimately be happy to rid themselves of the Emirs elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula, or the King in Jordan.

None of these are/were religious leaders or strict adherents of Islam although all of them talked it up. They are using US military might(the vast part of NATO) to clean out the dictators in advance of the rebirth of their caliphate. This calls into question all of Obama’s motives, but more importantly, it leaves open the very serious question about the thinking that went into our assistance in precipitating the Libyan coup d’etats in the first place. When those shoulder-fired missiles begin to show up in concert with the downing of airliners, they will probably tell us it hadn’t been due to missiles, despite thousands of witnesses to the contrary. They’ll blame it on faulty wiring in a fuel tank or some such nonsense. I think we’ve been here before.

Ladies and gentlemen, as I’ve already said, we can be happy Gaddafi is gone. What we should worry about is the way in which this entire operation has been handled, and the fact that we now have no idea where dangerous weapons have gone in the midst of all the turmoil. You can bet they went somewhere, and you can imagine the kinds of people who would want such weapons, and for what they might use them. As Barack Obama continues his campaign of making the Islamic world safe for the rebirth of a grand Caliphate, we are right to ask the questions as to his motives, but also with respect to his gross negligence in not seeing to it that these weapons didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Or was it negligence at all? One can only wonder.

Five men were apprehended early this morning in the Bexar County Courthouse in downtown San Antonio. The five men were described as being French-Moroccan Muslims, here in the US on visas having traveled to the US from London. Law enforcement officials who asked not to be identified told radio station 1200 WOAI “They got travel documents, parking passes, they have been all over the country.” Apparently, the men arrived at the courthouse in a van found parked in front of the building, and it contained photographs of infrastructure, shopping malls, water systems, courthouses, and other public buildings from around the nation. It’s clear that the men were on some sort of nationwide reconnaissance operation.

This certainly looks like some sort of intelligence-gathering operation for future attacks. Officials immediately cordoned off the entire scene around the courthouse, suspecting there could be explosives or other dangerous materials. No explosive were found, and the streets were reopened. The men were described as being in their early twenties, and the men told one law enforcement official that the men told him they climbed to the fourth floor of the courthouse (between 1am and 2am) “to get a better view of the city.”

“All that, coupled with the fact why they can’t explain why they are in the building at 1:22 in the morning raises questions,” the law enforcement officer said.

Ladies and gentlemen, while all our attention is on the Occu-pests, their buddies in the Islamist movement are running rampant. To top all of this off, an airliner was forced to land in Amarillo, TX because a man aboard a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Kansas City began shouting “You’re all going to die. Allahu Akbar – you are all going to hell!” The man, a US citizen, was taken into custody by police who met the plane at the terminal. One official on the scene characterized the man as having “lost control of himself,” and dismissed it as unrelated to terrorism.

What? Ladies and gentlemen, if a muslim male aboard an airliner begins screaming all of those things in the bathroom at the rear of the plane, causing the plane to make an emergency landing, it is an act of terrorism. I can guarantee you that every other person aboard that airliner was terrorized by his behavior. This is another example of political correctness gone mad, as what is clearly a serious incident is being related to the American people as merely a routine nuisance.

We had better wake up. We’re being set up, and the thugs have our number. They create distractions, hide their operations behind the distractions caused by others, and all the while, this is going on behind the scenes. We may be witnessing the wind-up to a major attack on the US, and we’re messing around with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells who are creating distractions and drawing law enforcement resources away from incidents like the reconnaissance mission in San Antonio.

Like this:

It shouldn’t have been possible. When America was attacked on 11 September, 2001, nearly three thousand Americans were slaughtered in a stunning use of passenger planes as weapons. Our nation recoiled in horror, and for a short while, people were inclined to make war against those responsible, but within days, other voices cried we should not make of this more than it had been. From the very beginning, we were urged by our media and our political leadership to avoid blaming all Muslims, as if Americans were unable to differentiate between our enemies and those who would be happy to live and let live. At this moment of crisis, when our nation’s response to the attack would be formed and established, already came the drumbeat of capitulation. Rather than name our enemy, and make total war against it as we had been promised, our government responded in a slowly retreating strategy advocated by the media. Some will argue that since Osama bin Laden is now dead, we can declare victory and wrap up operations, but the truth is more difficult because while we indeed sent our forces to confront al Qaida abroad, we have done unsatisfactorily little to wage war against the Islamists’ advancement of Jihad here at home.

While we’ve slept, thinking our nation secured by the war we’ve been waging overseas, radical Islam is alive and well, not only in those distant theaters, but also here inside our own borders, and even more shockingly, inside the walls of western philosophical protection. They’re using our sense of morality and decency against us.

The first of our failures lies in the unwillingness to name our enemy. We have made every possible attempt to conceal the truth from ourselves and from others. We’ve pointed to al Qaida and its affiliates, but we’ve permitted ourselves to pretend that if we can only defeat these, we will have won the war. Even were we somehow able to destroy every al Qaida fighter on a single day, this war would not be over, for to pretend that al Qaida had been our only enemy is the same as the fallacy expressed by some that on 7 December, 1941, our only enemy had been the empire of Japan. What sort of mindless, unthinking brute would suggest such a thing? It would have ignored all rational understandings of the world as we have known it, but one can suppose we should be thankful that Hitler used the occasion to honor his pact with Japan, and declared war upon the United States, otherwise, left to the media, the American people might never have known they were at war with Germany and Italy too.

After 9/11, we should have known that the war we faced was greater and wider than one group of thugs sheltering in a desert wasteland half a world away. Our leaders should have told us, and they should have prepared us for all the ugly truths about the nature of the war against us, and the philosophical base from which it was being waged. We should have learned it ourselves and demanded a thorough war, but now we arrive on the eve of that event’s tenth anniversary, and still we cower and huddle in fear at the credible threats looming over us. Our founders, and all the men from their time until the end of WWII must be turning restlessly in their graves at the spectacle of our defeat by such an enemy. We should never have been defeated, except that the war within our own country, and inside our own philosophical struggles has found a willing ally for our enemies inside our own borders. You wonder who that enemy might be, and it will surely pose a grave controversy to name them all, yet this nation cannot much longer endure if we do not recognize the truth of this war against it. We stand on the brink of losing our nation, and yet we still mouth platitudes in defense of the enemies who attack it. All of this begs the question: If a nation will not even clearly identify its enemies, does it deserve to survive?

Since so few others will take up this task, let me categorize our enemies more thoroughly. If we are to defeat them we must know them, and if we are ever to stop the national hemorrhaging at their hands, we will be compelled by reason to know their collaborators in our midst. We can no longer afford the timid answers to which we’ve become accustomed. The enemies of the United States fall into two broad philosophical groups, and it is here that we must start. The first of these enemies are comprised of the Islamists. What you must know is that in the prevailing schools of Islamic thought around the globe, America as you have known it must be destroyed. Israel, in any form, must be eradicated. Their fundamental hatred of our form of government, our variety of faiths, and our customs and traditions arises from a belief in the cultural and spiritual supremacy of Islam. The shrill collaborators in this country will point to the moderates as examples of those who do not adopt such positions, but in truth and as evidenced by facts from which we cannot escape, those “moderates” who do not wish to advance Islam’s grasp to the limits of our globe are relatively few. We are confronted with an enemy that has been instilled from birth with a baseline, fundamental hatred of the West. There are surely exceptions in Islam, but to pretend that they are a numerous proportion is to pronounce a death sentence upon ourselves and our children.

This category is further subdivided into four groups, and they are the militants who carry out the war, the so-called intellectuals who justify the war, the financiers who fund the war, and the adherents who are the most numerous group who for various reasons simply obey, submit, and support the war. This last group can be considered the Islamists’ answer to ‘useful idiots’, and it is from their number that the militants are recruited. These are also the people who have constituted the vast body of the mobs who advanced the ‘Arab spring.’ On Friday and Saturday, these “peace-loving people” invaded the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Let us not pretend that our enemy is some tiny minority in greater Islam. The truth is that the tiny minority in Islam consists of those relatively rare moderates who fit into none of these groups, and do no press for the advancement of Islam around the globe.

The other category into which our enemies can be divided is the collaborators. The major media outlets are the largest and most influential part of this group who have given the Islamists cover. They claim to care about protecting moderate Muslims, but as Pamela Geller explains on her Atlas Shrugs blog, our media have been complicit in advancing the Islamist narrative and in disguising the truth from Americans. This is the propaganda war being waged, and we’re losing it, because more often than not, our policies are shaped not by the nature of the real threats, but in response to the perceptions of Americans. As our people have been led astray in their understanding of our enemy, they’ve leaned toward policies that pretend one can fight a war piece-meal, without the involvement and commitment of the whole American people. While the collaborators have been singing this lullaby, the total war of the Islamists against the American people has been advancing on all fronts. The most notable group of collaborators is the American left. They have no love of this nation in its original form, and since they are intent upon destroying it, are only too happy to accept assistance wherever they find it.

Take care to understand that I do not here intend to say “Democrats,” for that party is composed of a broad range of people, many of whom joined the war on the side of America in its earliest days, but who have some shared sympathies with the much more virulent left, composed of radicals who want to undermine this nation at any opportunity. The truth is that rank-and-file Democrats don’t want America destroyed. They love the country too, although their particular views in some issues may be wrong-headed. No, those Democrats were among the firefighters, police, and other first responders who answered the call on 9/11, and who were also victims on that day. If I had any complaint with them, it would be only that they must watch more closely who they allow to lead them, and to which ends. They are patriots, and to pretend otherwise is to abandon one’s wayward brothers, and this I will not do. During my service in the Army, I knew many faithful, patriotic Democrats, but few of them were hard-core left. Most of them came from blue-collar families, and they took a backseat to none in their love of this country. Instead, let us focus with acute precision on the hard-core left. These people are not friends of this country, and the only traction they’ve ever gained has been through their attempts to co-opt the Democrat party, and infiltrate and overwhelm our media and government. They have allied themselves with the Islamists on a global scale because they adopt the same notion: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend[for now.]” They’ll divide up the world later. First, they must destroy America.

The Islamists long ago understood what the American people have not: Our vast military advantage makes it impossible to defeat us by open attack. Just as the North Vietnamese and their communist cohorts used a propaganda war against us at home to thwart us overseas, the Islamists now follow that model to force our withdrawal and compliance. We do not suffer from a lack of the ability to win this war, but the collaborators in our media and in our government have convinced us not to wage it, and we have been too willing to accept that answer in the name of our own sloth and cowardice. Instead, we huddle waiting for the next attack, while it is our liberties we have forfeited as we allow our persons to be scanned, our children and grandmothers groped, and security checkpoints within our country to become the natural and normal order of things. We send the willing warriors among us to far-flung battlefields where they spend their blood and their lives upon a purpose to which we at home are not thoroughly committed. We hamper them with rules of engagement that make of them sitting ducks, while we toss around high-minded terms about not wishing to become our enemy. At this pace, and with that attitude, we need not worry about such concepts much longer, because the enemy has gained a foothold not merely on our continent, but in our hearts and minds.

As the wilting flower of tomorrow’s official 9/11 National Commemorative Ceremony in New York begins to come into focus, we should rightly demand an accounting from our alleged leaders who chide us to silence in the name of avoiding the possibility that we would offend our enemies. Mayor Bloomberg of New York has excluded first responders from the official memorial event, and he’s also banned clergy and prayer, lest some group be offended. Which group do you suppose Mayor Bloomberg wishes not to offend? Christians? Jews? Who? This half-hearted, neutered ceremony signifies no victory, and it does damnably little to admit of our losses. Instead, it is a sign of our defeat, in which our leaders admit that the West has lost, and we have capitulated in a war between civilizations, one of a growing tyranny, and the other of a diminishing liberty. These won’t be their words, to be sure, but in the form of the memorial they have constructed, to carefully avoid offending even those who supported the perpetrators, it’s impossible to conclude they’re saying anything else.

It needn’t have been the case, but at present, it seems certain that while undermined from within, and infiltrated from without, we are now in a skulking retreat on the road to our national demise. The first step in reversing this is to tell these alleged leaders “no more.” It’s time we join with patriots like Pamela Geller in exposing the collaborators. The voices of those lost on 9/11 should be ringing in our ears, and with them the sounds of those brave men and women we’ve lost since, sent abroad to wage a half-hearted war in the name of a justice we’ve mostly abandoned. The principles we have claimed to love demand it.